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This article interprets the perceptions and the reasons that induce teachers to make their decisions to support immigrant students in real class context, while taking into consideration the needs of other students. Based on the teaching work analysis approach and the concept of managing the unexpected, the article aims to explore the real work executed by teachers by virtue of classroom factors, and to search the reasons behind the actions they take in their classes. Drawing on qualitative interpretive methodology, data were collected through class observation, audio recording, and interviews with two teachers and their three immigrant students from two different highly diverse primary schools in Quebec. Findings show that teachers opt for collective, small group and individual support to cover their students' needs when they anticipate or discover students' difficulties. More specifically, the analysis of teachers' reasons shows that implementing and processing of individual teaching support practices are influenced by the perceptions and the decisions that teachers must make momentarily when they encounter a student difficulty. Teachers' decisions result from an inner negotiation process. They have to choose quickly between implementing supporting practices and maintaining their ongoing prescribed tasks. More particularly, the teachers adopt four scenarios to manage the unexpected in their classes: 1-integrating the unexpected into the teaching activity, 2-considering the unexpected as a disruptive element, 3-exploiting the unexpected for the benefit of the class, 4-transferring the responsibility to the student.

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This article explores teachers’ participation in the school’s social justice system through the lens of the critical multicultural approach (May & Sleeter, 2010; May, 2000; 2003). Based on a research project about reconstruction and the theorization of teachers’ stories of practice (Desgagné, 2005) in a multiethnic context, data was collected from teachers in highly multiethnic primary schools in Québec. They were asked to narrate a story about a problem or an event with an immigrant or refugee student in their class. Four of these stories have been selected for this article. Our aim was to analyze the teachers’ cultural responses and their perception of their roles in supporting their students. Our analysis shows that although these teachers tend to make changes to their students’ reality, they cannot escape or contest “alone” the norms of an academic, societal and political system that governs its power relationships and privileges, its dominant norms and values.